


Roadside Attractions

by seapotato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Kiss, Angst Lite, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Feelings, Getting Together, M/M, as best as Dean can manage, domestic car conversations, gratuitous use of stilted communication, let dean say fuck, star trek reference as plot point, textured fluff, they both know that they BOTH KNOW, zebra cakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seapotato/pseuds/seapotato
Summary: The cop who had hauled him in thought it would do well for Dean to spend a night behind bars. Just to teach him a lesson. He'd called Sam with his one phone call and Sam had laughed, really hard, and told him, “Don't let the bedbugs bite,” before hanging up. It was mid-afternoon and Dean had a stupid number of hours to wait before the guards would get bored enough to ignore him.That's how Cas found him, the late afternoon sun slanting through the small window as he called out rude things to whichever guard was on duty at the desk around the corner to cover the sound of him picking the lock with a tiny pocket knife he'd had hidden in a seam in his pant leg. Cas had looked at him with a pitying sort of expression as he quickly shoved the knife in his jacket pocket.“This one yours? You sure you want him back?” the guard had asked from behind Cas.“I suppose so, yes.” Cas answered.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 70





	Roadside Attractions

Dean and Cas have been driving for several hours. They're somewhere in the Midwest, and Sam is a little further somewhere in the Midwest and they're driving to meet him. They had split up to cover two easy cases that were close enough to each other that they could back the other up if need be, but far enough apart that it didn't make sense to try to rush through one to make it to the other. Sam finished his hunt first and headed to the next because he didn't have to deal with getting _detained in an actual holding cell_ for speeding too many times in residential neighborhoods.

The cop who had hauled him in thought it would do well for Dean to spend a night behind bars. Just to teach him a lesson. He'd called Sam with his one phone call and Sam had laughed, really hard, and told him, “Don't let the bedbugs bite,” before hanging up. It was mid-afternoon and Dean had a stupid number of hours to wait before the guards would get bored enough to ignore him.

That's how Cas found him, the late afternoon sun slanting through the small window as he called out rude things to whichever guard was on duty at the desk around the corner to cover the sound of him picking the lock with a tiny pocket knife he'd had hidden in a seam in his pant leg. Cas had looked at him with a pitying sort of expression as he quickly shoved the knife in his jacket pocket.

“This one yours? You sure you want him back?” the guard had asked from behind Cas.

“I suppose so, yes.” Cas answered.

Dean had held his tongue until they were outside and had found the Impala in the back lot.

“I don't need your help, Cas. Don't you have somewhere to be?” It was small and mean of him but he's tired and he accidentally cut his hand on the knife when he shoved it away.

“No,” Cas had said equitably. He tugged Dean's hand out of his pocket, holding it at the wrist and touching the cut with his thumb. Now there was only blood, no wound. Dean pulled his hand back and carefully put the pocket knife away properly.

“Then why are you here? No wait: let me guess, you need something.” Dean wanted to shut up or say thanks or do anything but keep being an asshole.

Cas sounded a bit unsure when he said, “No. I thought I would—see what's up. I thought I would see you. If you're busy, I can go.”

It was so normal, something a normie would say, _If you're busy I can go,_ that Dean had just shrugged, pulled out the keys. “I've gotta meet Sam. If you feel like sticking around for a hunt you can zap there, I guess. Werewolf. I know four wheel traveling is like, a snail crawling through molasses for you.”

Cas stood expectantly at the passenger door of the Impala. “I don't know why you'd put a mollusk in molasses, but I said I came to see you, Dean. It wouldn't be impossible but it would be impractical to see you from several hundreds of miles away.”

Dean paused to take this in. “Suit yourself. But I choose the music.”

Cas hadn't even bothered to respond, but Dean caught him rolling his eyes as got in the car.

**\---**

Dean had texted Sam to let him know Cas had sprung him early from the station holding cell and Sam had responded with “Cool!” and a string of emoticons that Dean refused to decipher. Dean and Cas didn't talk too much for the first hour because Dean's waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Cas to spill the beans on whatever he needs Dean's help with. But slowly they started to have a conversation and it's not bad. So of course Dean has to mess it all up three hours in.

Before he knows it they've ended up at Cas asking, “Is it because she's a demon?” in this long-suffering voice that makes it sound like Dean's xenophobic or speciesist which is ridiculous because _of course it's because she's a demon._

But the way he asks it, like it's not really a question, like he's so sure of the answer, makes Dean spit out, “No, it's not because she's a _demon_.”

Cas makes this little noise and shifts his elbow against the windowsill like that gave him his answer and he was right all along. Dean realizes in that second that it wasn't a question. It was bait. Who the hell taught Cas to ask rhetorical questions as conversational traps? Shit, did _he_ do that?

They're quiet as Dean's words get washed around by the AC. A few billboards pass and Dean's about to make a stand when Cas says, “I'd expect you to have a little more of an open mind.”

Like he's disappointed in him.

Dean's auto-comeback kicks on before he can help it and he says, “Yeah, well, you'd expect wrong.” He means it to sound sarcastic and rude, for Cas to feel bad about saying that because who gave Cas the right to be disappointed in him over _Meg_? But it doesn't come out that way at all, it sounds petulant because he just. He hasn't known how to talk to Cas properly in months. He means to say one thing and it all comes out like a funhouse mirror.

Cas ignores that and plows forward, the hand that's not propping his head against the window tapping a soft rhythm on his knee. Dean can see it out of the corner of his eye, like a telegraph tapping morse code.

“Then what is it? Because she has preserved our bacon on numerous occasions. Cooperated with us when it was dangerous for her. Dean, she was willing to get ripped apart by hellhounds for us. I don't understand why you won't extend the barest courtesy. You've given more to those who have done less.”

“It's 'saved our bacon,' not preserved,” Dean corrects. “Though I guess bacon is preserved. But it's like, she saved it from getting pan fried. I think.”

He feels Cas give him a withering stare. Dean sighs, caving a little. He's tired. Jail sucks.

“Look man, I know what you mean, okay? But she's also betrayed us every time in some way, or made things way harder than they needed to be. And she's done some pretty terrible things to us, to our family, before she started stabbing at a new leaf or whatever. I can't forgive or forget that. Can't and won't. So, yes, it's because she's a demon. It's in her job description. ”

Dean thinks he's won and they can move on when Cas says, “Not as many times as I've betrayed you.”

Ah, fuck. This is not where he wanted that to go.

Someone taught Cas how to abuse segues. Sam, maybe. Crowley was good at that, too.

“Cas—”

“It's true.”

He needs to stop having this conversation but he doesn't know how. It just keeps going. It reminds him of a weeklong stretch when Sam was about five. The only thing that'd get the kid to sleep were late night re-runs of Barney. Freaking Barney. The lumbering purple blob made Sam catatonic, but not before Dean had more than his fill and there was something with how the tail moved—it didn't piss him off too much when Sam was entranced because he was willing to accept any help he could get at that point, but it gave him what he's positive was a waking nightmare. The last night he let Sam watch, Sam fell asleep pretty quickly and Dean was too exhausted himself to get up and turn it off. It was already muted so he figured whatever, fall asleep with the tv on, who cares. He shut his eyes. But maybe he didn't because he could still see Barney tramping around a kitchen. No his eyes were definitely shut, but it didn't matter, it was like he could see right through his eyelids, and whether he opened them or closed them made no difference and his head was frozen and he couldn't stop seeing it. It was horrible.

That's what this conversation is.

Dean spares Cas a sideways glance. “I'm not touching that, Cas. You know I'm not.”

Cas huffs and Dean hears Sam in it. It's exactly the way Sam huffs when Dean shuts down that self-destructive bullshit from his brother. Geez, they've really messed Cas up. The guy was nearly a blank slate for human expression and Dean and Sam imprinted on him like the most emotionally stunted mother ducks.

But while Cas has picked up their habits, he has always been his own person—beam of light, inter-dimensional trench coat alien, whatever—and doesn't drop things the way Sam will say, _Okay, fine. Okay. So, what've we got?_ Sam will sometimes flip his hair a little when he's exasperated but Cas taps his knee. And Dean braces himself for it, for more of the awful words that came out of Cas's mouth after Purgatory, words that ripped into Dean so painfully fast he just stared at him in that hotel room like the most useless piece of shit.

“Okay. Fine.” Cas says. Dean grinds his teeth. He's angry that Cas doesn't...push back? Yell at him?

He doesn't really know how they got here. They were talking about Meg, Dean ribbing Cas for macking on her and the pizza man line, and they detoured a hard left. He doesn't know why he brought it up, it'd just been one of the items on the laundry list of weird aches and pains that have been needling at him. Unresolved. Things with Cas are always unresolved. It's a blessing because in quiet moments he thinks it means Cas will come back so they can finally settle things and move forward, out of the loop de jour they get stuck in; and, of course, a curse, because the list can only get so long before it starts sneaking into his other lists, like grocery and ammo runs, and what Baby will need for her next tune up.

Dean is suddenly and sharply reminded of when Cas went all Bizarro with the leviathan inside him, when Dean had shouted _we can fix this_ and Cas screamed back _it isn't broken_ and Dean had no idea anymore what they were talking about but it sure as hell wasn't Cas's power trip.

This is when he'd usually crank up the music and let the conversation die. Dean knows his problem isn't that he's some uncaring bastard; it's kind of the opposite. He remembers how he recoiled when Sam the Soulless Boy Wonder said maybe he didn't want the damn thing back. That all those feelings just got in the way of doing the job. For Dean, it was all he had to keep from totally losing it.

He let regret fill him up on the rack in Hell, and he let fear swing his blade in Purgatory. Cas had been there both times, the two times he thought he really might not make it back (in Hell where he _gave in_ ), which was maybe why Dean couldn't seem to separate _Cas_ from _emotional lockdown_. There was always spillover, though. Most of the cracks in Dean's walls have Cas's name on them.

It hits him that maybe Cas isn't pushing back because he thinks Dean agrees with him. Agrees that Cas deserves what his stupid angel “family” has done to him, how he's been a pawn like the rest of them. Cas deserves to be punched in the face probably, and he deserves to hear a long list of why Dean is pissed at him, he deserves to have to address each point until Dean is satisfied with his answers, he deserves to have to sit in the car and travel the slow way, he deserves to have to sit still and watch whatever soaps Dean wants to watch at the end of the day without being allowed to point out continuity errors or ask annoying questions on purpose, he deserves to have to figure out how to manage his martyr complex and guilt even though that's harder than just drowning in it, and he deserves so much better than the shitty life he and Sam scrape together for him whenever he touches down. No wonder he keeps leaving.

Dean chooses his words carefully. He talks like he actually has a scrap of confidence and isn't terrified of fucking this up, of blanking out like he did in the hotel after Purgatory.

“I'm not going to talk about that because...we don't need to. What Meg's done—it's all about intention. And her intentions are a pile of crap. I know you know that, don't play dumb. I'm the righteous man, right? Or was. Or whatever, I'm just some jerk who kills monsters. Sam's better at moral gray areas than me. But, I know you're good. Cas, you're good.”

Cas goes completely still and Dean thinks, _way to go Winchester, A+, want to share some of that pep talk_ _rest of the class?_

He's positive Cas is going to split any second. He doesn't bother to keep talking—it's never held Cas before. The dude has literally disappeared when Dean's been in the middle of a word. But Cas isn't moving now, or speaking. He turns his head and presses it into his hand like he's got a headache and he just. Sits.

“Dude, are you crying?” Dean is mortified and fascinated. He can't be that awful at cheering people up.

Cas is quiet for a beat before he says, roughly, “No, Dean, I'm not crying.”

“Oh. Good.” He wants to make some quip about not getting tears on the leather seats, but he can't piece it together. Dean's not an idiot. He can recognize an important moment when it's happening. It's just that important moments tend to happen when they're about to get killed or someone else is about to get killed and the moment is blasted away by salt rounds. They're just in the car, though, eating up highway with bugs from neighboring cornfields splatting on the windshield. Dean doesn't know how to follow through.

A gas station floats up on the horizon and Dean chickens out. “I gotta get some coffee,” he says. He's a coward. Dean looks over and Cas nods but stays how he his, hand pressed against his eyes.

He grabs a coffee and some beef jerky, a pack of Zebra cakes because Cas has a sweet tooth he won't admit to. He tosses in a pack of gum that has temporary tattoos on the wrappers so he can prank Sam at some point in exchange for Sam leaving him in jail. He checks his watch. A couple more hours on the road before they hit the nowhere town Sam's already at. There's not really a rush, the killings in the paper dated a month ago were straight up werewolf and there won't be a full moon for two more days. Fuck it, he gets a sandwich from the small deli and a six pack of the lightest beer.

Cas doesn't say anything when Dean opens the door to dump his stuff in the back. He scrapes and washes the windshield, Cas disappearing and reappearing behind the soapy glass. He's still got a hand pressed to his forehead, over his eyes.

**\---**

When Dean pulls out of the gas station and gets back on the highway, Cas lowers his hand and opens his mouth. Closes it. Finally he says, “I shouldn't forget. How generous you are.” There's a question in there somewhere, or a different sort of statement, buried deep and unpolished, and Dean knows Cas is staring at him because he's felt that stare countless times. He feels lightheaded. It's too much.

“Yeah, well,” Dean deflects as he leans to reach in the back without looking. He drops the Zebra cakes onto Cas's lap. “That's me.”

The cellophane crinkles as Cas picks at one corner to open it. He's about to say something else when Dean's phone rings, fucking _Phantom of the Opera_ because Sam is a loser and a nerd and figured out how to delete the menu item that lets him change the ring tone. He digs it out of his pocket and tosses it at Cas, who has to drop his Zebra cakes to answer. “Put him on speaker.”

Cas does and says, “Hello, Sam,” in his grave and gravelly way.

“Oh, hey Cas! Dean there?” Sam's tinny voice sounds rested for once, a little distracted, like he's reading something.

Cas nods and Dean can't help an ungraceful snort because the guy has the brain the size of a solar system and still can't quite get the hang of a cell phone. “He is. You're on speaker.”

“Cool. Just checking in, how far out are you guys?”

“Three hours. Hit some traffic, couple car pile up, one lane for a bit,” Dean answers before Cas can say anything. They're only two hours out and Cas knows it but he stays quiet. “Why, what's up?”

“That sucks. Nothing really, I think we're right about it being a werewolf. I dug up all I could before the library and local news office closed early this afternoon. Some weird town holiday. Supposedly the founder—what's that sound?”

Cas has started plucking at the corner of his Zebra cakes again, the plastic right next to the phone, and Dean grabs the package saying, “Give me that,” tears it open with one hand and his teeth and passes it back.

“Sorry, the tooth fairy here couldn't wait to dig in to some Zebra cakes.”

“Aw, Dean, don't be giving him that junk. Cas if you want to try something make Dean get you real food.”

Dean's about to protest when Cas says, “If you knew the tooth fairy you wouldn't joke about him. He is not as....merciful as I am.” Dean has seen Cas stab people in the neck.

“Woah,” he says.

“Really?” Sam asks, shuffling papers and suddenly interested.

“Really.” Cas confirms before eating half a cake in one bite.

“Huh,” he and Sam say at the same time. It's quiet for a minute.

“Well,” Sam says, clearing his throat, “I'll leave you guys to it. Let me know when you're close. I'll text you the motel address.”

“Roger that,” Dean says, and Sam hangs up. Cas goes to hand Dean's phone back but Dean motions for him to keep it for now. He lets it balance on his thigh, the cellophane next to it with the second cake in his hand.

“Why did you lie to Sam?”

“What, about the three hours? Wasn't a lie. Well, the reason was, but we are three hours away.”

Cas finishes the Zebra cake and politely tucks the wrapper in the small plastic trash bag at his feet. He fidgets with Dean's phone.

**\---**

They don't talk much for the next hour besides Cas asking about two Jesus billboards they pass and what the point of a spork is (no point, as far as they can both figure out, and it's pathetic but nice to agree on something). The sun's setting now and Dean has his eyes peeled. Bingo. A turn off to the right that looks like it winds back behind a thin wall of trees to a rest stop. Dean pulls over, curves around the trees, and parks in a small lot facing the same landscape they've been driving through for the past several hours. It's empty. Tall prairie grass, a few gnarled oaks clumped together.

He grabs the bag of food and beer and gets out without saying anything. He leans against the Impala's warm hood. Cas gets out to stand next to him, staring at the prairie. It's just starting to get dark and Dean can see mosquitos hovering around in the blue light of dusk. A few fireflies start to blink above the grasses.

Dean pops the top on a beer, takes a long drink and rests it at his feet. He rips open the bag of jerky before tearing off a piece and handing it to Cas (because if he hands him the whole bag Cas'll eat it in under two minutes). He takes another hit from the beer and starts on his sandwich. The lettuce is soggy but lettuce is a travesty anyway, so he pulls it out between thumb and forefinger and tosses it to the edge of the lot, mostly on the dirt. Something'll eat it.

Cas gnaws thoughtfully at the jerky. He wants to say more, Dean can feel it, but he tries to shut him down with his own silence. This is nice, right now. Just eating and staring at nothing much, Cas not flitting away and neither of them bloody. He eats half his sandwich and sets the rest on the hood. It seems like the easiest thing in the world to take a drink, hand Cas another strip of jerky, and say,

“I'm pissed at you all the time now, but I'm also not.”

He's had some of his least favorite but admittedly most necessary conversations pulled over on the side of the road. More fireflies blink on and off and the blue deepens. He can hear the mosquitoes but they aren't really coming near. He wonders if that's Cas's doing.

Cas finishes his jerky before leaning back against the hood, his elbows locked and his hands splayed pale against the dark paint. There are permanent shadows under his eyes and he thrums blue with the evening light. Sometimes Dean forgets what he looks like. He's so fucking familiar. His first impression of Cas was his other form, as Cas pieced him back together, so Dean really _knows_ on some weird metaphysical atomic level, but his brain sometimes forgets. Cas's tie is crooked like always, and Dean feels low key hysterical for a second. He kind of wants to cry, but he also wants to just fall asleep against the deep black of the Impala. He'd do a lot for that crooked tie. He has done a lot for it. Like Sam's army men jammed into the backseat, like Bobby's flask and Charlie's quick fingers and geek shirts, Garth's...Garthiness. It's like those things but it isn't those things. With Cas it's always been something else.

“I know what you mean,” Cas answers him, nodding. “Perhaps you'd like to hit me?” he offers.

Dean scoffs, “Yeah, and break my hand? No thanks.”

Cas smiles slightly and shrugs like, _your loss_.

Dean eats the other half of his sandwich as it gets darker. Streetlamps have come on at the far end of the parking lot. They've got another half hour of leeway time. The moon is nearly full and fantastically bright, lighting up the pale grasses.

He balls up the sandwich wrapper and aims for a trashcan a few feet away. It's a perfect shot and he misses. He turns and glares at Cas, who's wearing one of his sly grins, where it's only with his eyes as his mouth is set in some semblance of failed nonchalance because he's totally messing around. Dean keeps glaring and he thinks, _Christ, this is it for me. This billion year old celestial douchebag who once ate over a hundred white castle burgers and also almost got everyone killed._

Dean jostles his shoulder and says, “That was lame. And littering is a crime.”

The sky is a deep marine blue now, and Dean feels like they've descended somewhere slow and quiet. Pinprick stars are out, the warm air rising to make them waver like light under water. More fireflies, light pinging like a radar, tiny lighthouses calling to each other. Safe harbor.

“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean grunts in response, getting another beer. “It's not because she's a demon.”

“No,” is all Dean can offer. Cas crosses his arms in front of his chest, frustrated now. Dean doesn't really care because that's another thing Cas deserves. To be frustrated by the damn gridlock of _this thing_ between them. Cas keeps picking at it as soon as it scabs over, plucking at the edges of the open wound like he plucked at the plastic packaging of the Zebra cakes.

“Then—” Cas starts, but Dean interrupts him, suddenly impatient with this non-conversation, with this damn loop. They've got fifteen minutes before they need to hit the road again.

“C'mon, Cas. Use that big brain of yours. This—” he gestures between them with the beer in his hand, “This is it for me, man. And you just keep leaving. You keep...leaving,” he finishes lamely.

As soon as he says it he can't take it back. He wouldn't know how to put it away even if he did. It's too big and unwieldy and he's kept it tamped down for literal years so he doesn't understand why _now_ he—he pushes up off the hood, turning to toss his beer in the trash can. It makes it in, of course. He's about to grab the rest of the six pack, whatever, they can get to Sam early, this was a stupid idea anyway, when Cas snags at his elbow, stopping him. He speaks in a rush, low and urgent.

“I leave because I want to fix things not without you but _for_ you. Every time I leave, I do it to fight my way back so that when I return I'll be worthy. I am trying, Dean, to be worthy of you. I have done a poor job. I don't want to burden you more than I already have. ”

Dean wants to laugh because _a poor job_ is the most hilarious euphemism for unleashing monsters that nearly turned humanity into a cattle farm, and Cas knows it. But—intentions. He said it himself, and he believes it. So what, maybe he hasn't done enough to make Cas believe it, too. Dean's been a bit busy not just trying to stay alive (and keep humanity alive) but to keep them from various gruesome fates worse than death. And maybe if Cas was _around more_ Dean could help him.

He thinks about John, and Mary. How as a kid he thought if they just talked more, really talked instead of yelling on the phone, then...communication only became a weakness to him when it started to mean he'd have to deal with shit he literally had no room left to deal with. He knows he asks for things Cas can't do or can't give, he knows he hasn't always made Cas's worth clear. Hell, he's used that to try to get him to stay and it's just been pushing him away.

He starts to turn around and Cas fully grabs his elbow like he thinks Dean's going to be the one who leaves. They stare at each other for a minute, the hazy parking lot lights making strange shadows, Cas's hand gripping tight to Dean's elbow, Dean's arms hanging loosely at his sides. He makes a choice he only partly understands; his instincts have always filled in the gaps.

“Well, stop it. That's not how it works. And you don't get to decide that alone. You don't get to decide that for me. We both screw up more when we're fighting separately. That's a fact.”

Cas loosens his grip a little and looks away, over the field to the fireflies.

“We're better together,” he says slowly, like he's just starting to believe it.

“We're better together,” Dean agrees. _Finally_. It's obvious and it's not new, but it's simple and stable. He's so relieved he gets a rush of adrenaline that both gives him the biggest high but also makes him want to puke. _Fucking finally_.

Dean doesn't know what to do next. They've never gotten this far. Well, they almost have, a lot of times, but again: mortal peril has a way of creating and ruining the moment. Does he just...should he kiss him? Is that normal? Is it too normal for how wacked out they are? Is that a pathetic first step? He doesn't know if he's ready for that. Actually, he's definitely ready for that. He's been so ready for it for years he _forgot,_ like how he sometimes forgets what Cas looks like. Dean realizes with horror that their honeymoon period was the _Apocalypse._ They are beyond first base, they skipped over all the fun stuff and landed right in couples counseling.

He's ready to go to Vegas and get Elvis married and make Cas pasta primavera and decapitate vampires side by side so he can wipe the blood off Cas's face with his sleeve and he is definitely ready to get naked with someone who doesn't ask about (or pointedly ignore) his scars because they know about each one already. Dean hasn't really been interested in sex since Lisa; and even then, he felt absurd because he was into it (hello, _Lisa)_ but he was also really paranoid. Like, what if something attacked while they were doing it? Would she think it was weird if he kept his gun in arm's reach during? What if something went after Ben (again) because he wasn't paying enough attention? How does he chase down a monster without his pants on?

It's stupid and embarrassing but he's always thought he'd feel safe with Cas. But, really, it's just logistics: the guy exists in multiple dimensions, Dean'd only be boinking some of them, there's no way something could get past his awareness. It'd ruin the moment, sure, but he'd probably beat Dean to smiting whatever attacked.

And it's not even that he's thought specifically about sex with Cas a whole lot, it's more like he's just thought about _with Cas_ for everything. He'd let Dean have whatever guns and knives he wanted on the bedstand. He wouldn't get freaked out when Dean woke up yelling from a nightmare. And that'd be nice. To not have to explain himself or pretend he's someone else. He doesn't have a lot of self love, but he's worked pretty damn hard to accept his choices and The Life and maybe he's ninety percent crap but it's his crap. He will never admit to this, under no amount of torture or alcohol, but he can't help thinking: it's nice that someone like-likes him. Someone who knew he gave up in Hell and rescued him anyway. Someone that he like-likes, too.

He's totally going to do it. He's great at initiating. He initiates all sorts of things. But...now it's been kind of too long. Cas is still there, waiting or maybe not waiting, just standing there and Dean always thought that if they ever got physical in _that_ way it'd be an end-of-the-world thing or a heat-of-battle thing (ugh, _Meg,_ why does she have to be so surprising and a great fighter and sarcastic and funny and if she wasn't a demon Dean'd probably be friends with her?). He's spent a little too long turning things over in his head and the moment is fizzling away and it is definitely dark now and a ton of fireflies are out and they both look ugly in the slanted parking lot light and Dean's breath smells like watery beer and a turkey sandwich and Cas probably smells like beef jerky and artificial flavoring.

He looks at Cas like _throw me a lifeline here_ because he's positive this is the only non-world-ending-or-battle chance he's going to get and he doesn't think he can get back in the car with this hanging over them. He doesn't want to.

Cas throws him a lifeline. His hand on Dean's elbow stops gripping and instead rests there, cupping it warm and solid. With his right hand he reaches out two fingers, his index and middle, like he's going to flash a scout's honor but he extends them to Dean at an angle. He looks at Cas's fingers and he looks at Cas who is looking at him expectantly and then he gets it. Oh my god. He is not—he is _not_ offering Dean a Vulcan hand kiss. But he totally is.

Dean takes it. He presses his index and middle finger in the same gesture against Cas's. He can't bring himself to look up at Cas's face so he stares at their fingers, Dean's callused from pulling a trigger, Cas's not callused but not smooth either.

“Where'd you, uh,” Dean clears his throat, not moving away but finally glancing up. “Where'd you learn that move, Casanova?”

Cas cocks his head like a bird and smiles, small and smug, “Ambassador Sarek of late-night motel TBS programming and Sam's pirated digitally remastered collection.”

“Pretty publicly affectionate for a Vulcan,” Dean says.

Cas presses slightly against Dean's fingers before dropping both hands and slipping them into the pockets of his trench coat.

“You'll have to instruct me in socially acceptable forms of intimacy,” Cas says, and then gets that face again, the _I'm totally fucking with you_ face. Dean ignores him because he's mature.

He grabs the beer off the ground and sets it in the backseat before slamming the door shut and saying,

“Dude, we are not talking about PDA. Get in, we're behind schedule now.” He's definitely not blushing. People have gotten sunburns while driving, it's a documented phenomenon.

They get settled and Dean pulls back onto the highway, flips on the brights because the road is flat and empty. He'll have Cas call Sam soon, let him know they're close. They drive for a few minutes when Cas reaches out and puts a hand against the back of Dean's neck, pressing against the knot he always gets now when driving for more than a couple hours at a time.

“Is this okay?” Cas asks quietly.

“Yeah,” Dean answers, tipping his head back a little, “Yeah, it's okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> An oldie, circa 2017
> 
> Confession: I did not fact check the tooth fairy. I still have not fact checked the tooth fairy. Please do not fact check the tooth fairy. 
> 
> Things that did not appear but should have: those dumb sunglasses that Dean and Sam wore that one time, a peek at Cas's socks, and Baby pointedly playing only love songs for over four hours.


End file.
